Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The Modernity of "Post-Modernism"

R. Scott Clarkof Westminster California has written an interesting post dealing with the thoroughly modern character of so-called "post-moderns." I have argued for some time that there is nothing new or "post" about post-modernism. Ignorantly, the leaders of the Emergent Church (MacLaren, Paggit, Jones, etc.) dismiss biblically conservatives evangelicals as entrenched in modernity. To the contrary, it was precisely the prophets of modernity during the last few centuries who heaped their strongest rebukes upon evangelicals. We would do well to read J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism. Dr. Clark writes:

One of the more shocking facets of the EV [Emergent Village] movement his how obliviously yet obviously and deeply indebted they are not only to the Anabaptists but also to the Enlightenment. For all their noise about being “postmodern,” it’s quite obvious to me that they are rather “most modern.” Their religious subjectivism is as modern as Schleiermacher and Romanticism. Their eclecticism is entirely modern. When they, as McLaren does, mashup Anglicanism with the Anabaptists they’re acting as autonomous, reality-creating, sovereign entities.

In contrast, confessional Protestants are not “creators.” We are mere creatures living in a world of divinely created givens, muddling through with a semi-realized eschatology, an epistemology that starts with divine authority, with divine revelation and which reads that revelation with the church. We begin with a ecclesiology that includes real, visible churches (sins and all) with real, visible sacraments, and real preached gospel of grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. We sit on couches and drink coffee before and after our services but during our services we hear the gospel, sing psalms, and eat bread and drink wine with the church catholic.